When Max Mingus is offered 10 million dollars to find Charlie Carver dead or alive, the whole thing leaves him cold, for Max, ex-cop turned PI, known to be the best in the business to locate missing persons, is just out of jail, back in Miami having served a seven year sentence for manslaughter; and Max cares about nothing.
But the father of Charlie, billionaire Allain Carver is persistent, his son Charlie had disappeared on the Island of Haiti two years ago when he was three, and since then despite exhaustive enquires no trace of him has been found. More to postpone re-Enquiry into the results of the previous detectives elicits the facts that not only did they fail but came to a nasty end. With this unpleasant though in mind Max heads off to Haiti, where he meets the dysfunctional Carver family and the delectable Chantale, who has been assigned his guide whilst he is in Haiti.
Haiti is something of a culture shock. Also is the information that over the years scores of children have just disappeared in Haiti. In a county that his steeped in black magic there is a sort of acceptance that the children have been lured away from their families by a mythical sort of pied piper called Mr Clarinet. Max doesn’t buy into any of it, but goes along with the flow as he tries to get a handle on Charlie’s disappearance. In the back ground is Vincent Paul, a frightening giant of a man who seems at the core of everything and Max knows he must at some point challenge Vincent Paul.
Max pursues his investigations obviously following the same tracks as his predecessors, as he interviews people it becomes clear that investigators have been here before him, so at what point did they uncover something that got them killed, or maimed. Max keeps doggedly on. He witnesses the might and terror of falling foul of Vincent Paul, but does not flinch from the fact that at some point there will be a confrontation.
The book has much colour and Nick Stone vividly portrays a Haiti one can only know if you have spent time there. His writing is powerful and some of the scenes come too vividly to life for comfort but always holding the readers attention .
Jeff Harding gives a great Max Mingus, giving the character the right balance of courage, devil-may-care, pathos and sensitivity which make up the complex character that is Max Mingus. As always when Jeff Harding is reading the voices he produces for both male and female are so good and clearly defined that one is totally sucked into the drama that is unfolding. Really excellent.
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Lizzie Hayes
Nick Stone won the CWA Debut Dagger for Mr Clarinet and it was well deserved. His new book King Of Swords will be published in August 2007.